Des photos en Suisse

Happy days are here again! Lena uploaded her Switzerland pictures and now I can appropriate at will for you readers out there in blogland.

This is the underground archeological site I told you about at St. Pierre Cathedral in Geneva. I think in this picture I'm standing in a Roman baptistry.

The Allobrogian chieftain! He had no skull because some ancient persons dug it up, thinking it had mystical powers.

Breakfast and dishwashing at our Couchsurfer's apartment in Bern. Notice her little red fridge. Adorable.

Downtown Bern. That statue on the pole in the middle of the street is from the 1500s, and there are hundreds of different ones all over the city. They were put up before the streets had much traffic, so now the cars and trolleys have to weave around them. In the background is the Zytglogge, the medieval clock with the performing puppets.

It's comforting to know that no matter how far you get from home, there will always be a Body Shop nearby. Notice that this is also the last picture of me with my camera. :(

At the market in Bern there were lots of eggs because it was Easter weekend. The traditional egg-coloring method in Switzerland is to wrap onion skins around the eggs and secure them with a section of pantyhose, leaving some areas uncovered to form a design. Then they're boiled in water and the onion pigment transfers onto the egg as a beautiful reddish-brown tint.

I believe these eggs cost about $19 apiece. I did not buy any.

There was a playground in Bern. And we played on it.

On to the cheesemaking!

There were four of these giant vats in the Gruyere cheese factory, and each one holds enough milk to produce 12 rounds of cheese.

The cheesemaker does some quality control. You can see the lineup of round presses that turn the semi-solidified milk into cheese.

So much cheese! It's funny to think that the gruyere I buy in Ann Arbor at the imported cheese counter at Meijer probably came from this very room.

Outside the factory, we also got to watch this guy make gruyere the old-fashioned way-- in a copper kettle over a fire. The stringed instrument resting on the kettle is dragged through the milk to break up the solidifying mass.

Now for the shots you've all been waiting for...

The Swiss Alps!

And the Cutest Village on Earth Award goes to... Gruyere, Switzerland!

Now we shall skip ahead to Geneva, our last leg of the trip.

Here we have the St. Pierre Cathedral, adopted church of John Calvin and birthplace of Calvinism.

On display inside the church is the chair used by Calvin almost five hundred years ago.

And last but not least we have Lena in front of the Jet d'Eau in Lake Geneva. It's a city landmark and apparently the highest water fountain in the world.

So that was Switzerland. It makes me happy to have some pictures of it, even if the ones I took are gone. Good job, Lena. :)